“I Have Left You the Mountain,” published on the occasion of the Albanian Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presents ten new texts written by contemporary writers and thinkers on the architecture of displacement. These texts have been set to music and sung by some of the last remaining groups of Albanian iso-polyphonic singers, an art form now protected as “intangible cultural heritage” by UNESCO.

A living art form in step with the generations of migration and transition, “singing migration” has been a core part of processing departure, longing, and return. The Albanian Pavilion is a space of collective listening; of “individuals in company.”

“I Have Left You The Mountain” initiates a conversation about the urbanism of displacement, projecting the Albanian case onto an international stage, with the express intention to transmit that dialogue and its speculations back into Albania.